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"JESUS CHRIST IS THE SAME ... FOR EVER"
(Heb 13:8) )

56. The Church has endured for 2000 years. Like the mustard seed in the Gospel, she has grown and become a great tree, able to cover the whole of humanity with her branches (cf. Mt 13:31-32). The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, thus addresses the question of membership in the Church and the call of all people to belong to the People of God: "All are called to be part of this Catholic unity of the new People of God ... And there belong to it or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful as well as all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, which by the grace of God is called to salvation".(35) Pope Paul VI, in the Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam illustrates how all mankind is involved in the plan of God, and emphasizes the various circles of the dialogue of salvation.(36)

Continuing this approach, we can also appreciate more clearly the Gospel parable of the leaven (cf. Mt 13:33): Christ, like a divine leaven, always and ever more fully penetrates the life of humanity, spreading the work of salvation accomplished in the Paschal Mystery. What is more, he embraces within his redemptive power the whole past history of the human race, beginning with the first Adam.(37) The future also belongs to him: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever" (Heb 13:8). For her part the Church "seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ himself under the lead of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgment, to serve and not to be served".(38)